Posts Tagged ‘Al Qaeda’

A Floundering Ship-Syria
‘Rats leave the sinking ship’you must have heard before. In fact rats move in a sinking ship judging from the near collapse of Syria. It was long in coming and the crew are a motley mixture of sects that are attracting some rats from far off. The Arab Spring was a reef that the ship of Bashar al-Assad could not avoid. The “Friends of Syria” meeting in late February met in Tunis in order to ship arms to Syrian rebels. Friends are in name only. In fact all those Sunni factions wherever they are want to settle scores with Shi’ia faction supporting al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),- like Qatar and Kuwait, are friends on geopolitical grounds. If the royal family of Bahrain,-Sunnis, has a stranglehold on the majority Shi’ia population the troops sent by the Saudi government are there to prop up the King.
Little is known about the exact nature of Syria’s opposition. But it must be at present what we saw at the initial stages of the Arab Spring, many protesting on genuine grounds for more political freedom. We saw this in Libya and in Egypt. Jihadists are eying for their chance to come in. U.S. Ambassador Rob Ford, who personally met with opposition groups before he left Syria, stated that the opposition is made up of two main constituent groups. The first more liberal and secular, while the second is Jihadist in outlook. There will always be token moderates as in the case of Mali or in Egypt. In the former the rebels that declared Azawad were Taureg separatists. Now the north is under foreign mercenaries and a wing of al-Qaeda. The moderates will not be able to hold on given the unstable nature of ‘friends.’ Loyalty to the country is not an issue as much as to the sect and tribe.
To quote‘Little is known about whether the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood resembles their Egyptian equivalents or whether they draw from more nefarious influences from groups like the Salafist Al-Nour Party in Egypt. Perhaps most disturbing of all was official U.S. Government confirmation that Al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to conduct operations in Syria against the Assad government.’(www.opencanada.org/news/the-pitfalls-of-arming-syrias-opposition/)
Mighty mess grows out of acorns like war on terror in Iraq.
benny

Here is one example from the abc news report of April 3, 2012. ‘Gadhafi’s mercenaries spread guns, fighting in Africa.’
In March a mutiny by Mali’s soldiers waged a coup d’etat and succeeded. It put a stop to two decades of democratic rule. In the chaos that has ensued after the coup, Taureg separatists in Mali seized the last government holdout in the north, the legendary town of Timbuktu. A rebel group has declared independence for a region it calls Azawad. Meanwhile two rebel groups are also trying to snatch power. In short these deep division in the opinion of Dr. Mehari Taddele Maru at the Institute for Security Studies based in Pretoria, South Africa is a setback.
“This is a setback for the international community which has invested so much money in the past decade in democracy, peace, and security in Africa,” This may cause another rebellion in neighboring Niger. Help rendered by NATO in terms of money and materials has gone elsewhere.
Here is another news reported by David Blair of UK paper Telegraph on July 10,
‘A few days after desert gunmen swept out of the Sahara and captured Timbuktu, the city’s conquerors broadcast a message over its radio station.
“We are going to welcome some foreigners,” the inhabitants of this ancient trading centre in northern Mali were told. “Do not be afraid when you see them: we must all welcome them.”
A convoy of Land Cruisers duly arrived, laden with bearded fighters clad in sand-coloured turbans and robes. These were not rebels from the local Tuareg tribe, who had claimed credit for the fall of Timbuktu, but international jihadists from across the Muslim world including Algerians, Nigerians, Somalis and Pakistanis. This multinational parade drove home a harsh message: a new state had been born under the effective rule of al-Qaeda. Bewildered townspeople, who had only seen Tuareg insurgents up to that point, realised its true significance.
“We first saw the foreigners when they were in our city,” said Mousa Maigar, who witnessed the arrival of the column. “How they entered our country, we don’t know.”
Almost unnoticed by the outside world, a branch of al-Qaeda has seized a swathe of Africa covering more than 300,000 square miles. “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM) and its allies have taken over an area of the Sahara more than three times the size of Britain, complete with airports, military bases, arms dumps and training camps.
Against backdrop the destruction of Timbuktu World Heritage site shall come as no surprise. What gave these al-Qaeda elements the strength to hold defenseless civilians as hostage?
Applying Western standards of fairplay and equity to aid the rebels in Libya triggered upheaveal in Mali. Instead of following through where the NATO armaments and money end up the West turned to other matters. Just as the USA did in the 80s. All that help brought down the twin towers of WTO. The al-Qaeda has done it again. In short the West didn’t learn from history.
The AQIM are militants armourplated with barbaric practices and ideas. We didn’t give arms into their hands but we just neglected to control the aftermath of Gaddafi’s exit. The arms were sold by rebels,foreign mercenaries and arm merchants in black market and through many middlemen who made money.
Tailspin: What is wrong with multiculturalism? It is like sleeping with the enemy, trying to bring together two time-zones, and two incompatible cultures of live and let-live and an eye for an eye. It will not work.
benny

Law and Justice do not always connect as in a direct line. I can cite parallels from cosmology and from moral philosophy. It is an anomaly theory.
Cause and Effect conform to it. Take prayer for example. Suppose I prayed God for a certain favor and did a number of good works to please Him and suppose I succeed would it mean God interfered with the divine will? It is often that in the interplay of several events that my prayers are answered or better still something else happened in my life more in tune with my present needs. Cause of my prayer and effect of it are linked in a roundabout manner. Still in effect it is as if God did answer my prayer. Now let us go onto cosmic matters. The Big Bang releases tremendous energy and there is an inflationary theory to explain this disproportionate amount of energy. Where these had come from? No one knows. We are not here discussing cosmic matters but about simple element of justice.
These days I have been hearing about Osama not getting due process of law.
First of all let me say Osama bin Laden was a lawless man.
Law can only work where humanity is enshrined in man’s hearts. Law- abiding citizens wherever they may be, shall appreciate it since they know if law is denied to them by some agencies they do have a recourse to justice in a court of law. Tariff war between nations can be sorted out in an International Court just as war crimes or any other do have a common platform to be heard. Law is accepted as the ultimate arbiter. We are not living in a lawless world but in a world where law is upheld. It reigns supreme well for most parts of the world. But we also have a number of lawless regions. Somali pirates for instance operate with impunity from a lawless region. Similarly are lawless regions from where terrorists can strike at will. It is this lawlessness and utter disregard to human values that have made Al-Qaeda succeed for a time. (There are groups like Taliban whose peculiar notions of law are drawn from barbaric times where women are stoned etc.,) These have no locus standi in any progressive modern society. In short lawless men either imposes their own law arbitrarily or law of the nations is entirely flouted. Osama caused death of thousands and thousands. These victims of all genders,age and faiths were denied due process law. If this be the case why should he be given a fair trial? Which court of law is appropriate when the victims belonged to nations all across the globe?
Suppose Osama was taken alive and was in American custody these terrorist groups would have hijacked some thousands of innocents from various places and held them to ransom. Why put more innocent lives needlessly to peril? Justice was meted out to a lawless man who never showed iota of humanity in his lifetime. Law and Justice need not always meet. If there were an extentuating circumstance or an anomaly it was here.
benny